Canada day in Dawson City

Dawson Travel Blog

We celebrate Canada Day in Dawson City and tried to embrace as many freebies and activities as possible! We started off the morning at Klondike Kate's to enjoy another KK Special for breakfast, then caught the last few minutes of the parade that went through town. Well, really the last few minutes, was probably all of it, since I think it was about 4 minutes long consisting of a few decorated fire trucks and a couple bikes. Nevertheless, it was fun to see and there were quite a few people out cheering and celebrating.

We then headed to the visitor centre to enjoy a bit of free cake and were somehow drawn into the Northwest Territories Visitor Centre to inquire about Tombstone National Park. A park a little ways up the Dempster Highway that Dieter had told us about the night before.

Yukon Gold Panning Championships

It was looking more and more likely as a plan for the next day.

Unfortunately, this is when Sam would leave us, so it would just be Janelle and I traveling from now on. We drove her to the aiport where she took an Air Canada flight back to Vancouver through Whitehorse.

Post airport, we headed to the pool for the Toonie Swim. Why not! It also gives us an included shower! It was nice to wade around in the pool a little bit and just talk about everything we've done so far and what our plan was for tomorrow. We made our way back into town and stopped bythe Gold panning championships taking place near the water. It's a pretty cool site to see, and some of the competitors are incredibly fast!

That night, we repacked the car and ate a quick dinner. We had posted a sign on a noticeboard in town and in the hotel office the day before saying we give someone a ride back to Whitehorse on the 2nd. Unfortunately we didn't see a note from Raphael who was staying at the hostel who needed a ride, before we replied to Daniel who had written us a note on the noticeboard in town! He approached our tent that evening asking if we had seen his note. It was too bad! He apparently spent so long writing the note (English wasn't his first language)! We felt bad, but we couldn't just dump Daniel at that point, so we went out with him that night and bought him a beer. Raphael had spent 2 months studying English in Vancouver and he was traveling up north before he went back home. He's a ballsy guy, apparently he had rented a kayak on his own and kayaked up the Yukon River from Whitehorse to Dawson City. "Why not?" he said, not that he was an experienced kayaker, but he's always wanted to try it. He saw our amazed faces and told us of a guy he met who had kayaked on his own from Victoria to Anchorage on his own.

We decided to go up the Dempster the next day anyway, so delayed our departure from Dawson city until the 3rd, and Raphael had needed to get back anyway, so we couldn't have given him a ride. We would see him roadside the next day, trying to hitch a ride.